Wednesday, February 11th 2009, 6:08 PM
Although Staten Island surgeon Richard Batista gave his wife a kidney only to demand she return it — or shell out $1.5 million — in an ongoing divorce battle, there are still many New Yorkers willing to donate the gift of life to a loved one. No fine print or backsies.
When four city residents needed new kidneys, four of their spouses or family members donated one of their own kidneys — to complete strangers.
After lab tests showed their ailing relative would probably reject their own donor organ, the ailing patients and their loved ones turned to the National Kidney Registry — a program that organizes donor chains — to arrange a swap.
The healthy family members would give a kidney to a complete stranger, and in return another stranger would give their loved ones a kidney that tests showed would work.
Three of the four transplant surgeries took place on Feb. 14, 2008, at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell; the fourth, a few months later. This chain of organ donations brought together a true melting pot of Big Apple citizens, who discovered there were strangers out there willing to show them a lot of love.
Ana Maria Berdeja was at one end of this chain reaction. The 59-year-old Hollis, Queens, woman had been on dialysis for three years, having suffered kidney failure due to high blood pressure and diabetes.
“Her kidneys were only working at about 20%,” said her husband Jorge, 61, a cabinet maker who emigrated from Bolivia in 1979. “There were a lot of side effects from the dialysis, and she was very tired and depressed.”
Jorge had already been tested to see if he could give his a wife a kidney, but they were a poor match. (The best organ donor-recipient matches typically have the same blood type, and little to no cellular reaction — i.e., potential for rejection — when the two blood samples are mixed in a “cross match” lab test.)
But Dr. David Serur, medical director of the Rogosin Institute Transplant Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell, and Dr. Sandip Kapur, the hospital’s transplant surgery chief and kidney transplant program director, had been working with the National Kidney Registry. They knew that a California woman named Cindy Marshall had made a standing offer to donate one of her healthy kidneys to someone in need — and Berdeja happened to be a match.
“An altruistic donor unlocks the key to the whole process,” said Kapur. “This is an innovative system to keep people alive.”
The NKR’s “system” meant Marshall’s amazing act of selflessness came with a condition: Jorge Berdeja would have to pay it forward by donating his kidney to someone else in need, who would have to find a relative to do the same. It’s called a “never-ending altruistic donor chain.”